modern art

American  

noun

1. art that was produced in the late 1860s through the 1970s and that rejected traditionally accepted forms and emphasized individual experimentation and sensibility.

---

Etymology

Origin of modern art

First recorded in 1800–10, for an earlier sense

Example Sentences

He lives in a company-owned apartment full of dark, polished surfaces and bad modern art; she lives in a rundown apartment furnished with termites.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 18, 2026

The world of art in the 21st century—the world of modern art, as we still call it—does not respond comfortably to the idea of a masterpiece.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 22, 2025

Mr. Crow, a professor of modern art at New York University, has previously written about the relationship between art and politics in 18th-century France and America’s 1960s counterculture.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 21, 2025

Abdoulaye N was previously a guard at the Center Pompidou in Paris, an arts centre containing Europe's largest museum of modern art.

From BBC • Nov. 6, 2025

Volker Oldenburg paints modern art in a potato cellar in West Berlin.

From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell